U.S. Pat. No. 3,213,058, to Boyle et al., discloses benzotriazole compounds and their incorporation into certain plastics as UV absorbers, via reaction with carboxy and hydroxy groups contained in said compounds.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,528,311 discloses benzotriazole monomers which are copolymerizable with vinyl monomers such as methyl methacrylate to yield optically clear polymers useful in the preparation of intraocular and contact lenses. One of the disclosed benzotriazole monomers and is 2-[3′-t-butyl-2′-hydroxy-5′-(3″-methacryloxypropyl)phenyl]-5-chlorobenzotriazole as shown in Scheme A below:

U.S. Pat. No. 4,803,234 describes a process for the preparation of another benzotriazole monomer, 2-[3′-tert-butyl-5′-(3″-dimethylvinylsilylpropoxy)2′-hydroxypheynyl]-5-methoxybenzotriazol, which is as shown in the scheme B below.

U.S. Pat. No. 4,716,234 describes other benzotriazole monomers illustrative of which are 2-[2′-hydroxy-5′-(β-methacryloxyethoxy)-3′-tert-butylphenyl]-5-methoxy-2H-benzotriazole:
and 2-[2′-hydroxy-5′-(γ-methacryloxypropoxy)-3′-tert-butylphenyl]-5-methoxy-2H-benzotriazole:

The synthetic schemes for producing benzotriazole monomers suffer from difficulty in obtaining the starting materials and are expensive to carry out.